Seventeen-year-old Cécile, her widowed father, and Elsa, his mistress of the moment, are vacationing at a Mediterranean villa.

Cécile “fears boredom and tranquility more than anything.”

Raymond invites Anne Larsen, a friend of his late wife, to visit, to share his bed, and to marry him.

Elsa leaves and takes up with another man.

Cécile is sure Anne would turn her and her father into “two civilized, well-behaved and happy people.” Rather than have that happen, Cécile has sex with the boy next door and then gets him and to pretend to be having an affair with Elsa.

That makes Raymond jealous; he tries to reclaim Elsa.

Anne thinks she’s been ousted.

She drives her car off a cliff.

Everyone lives happily ever after except Anne, who is dead.

Sagan was 18 when she published Bonjour Tristesse. The young woman had talent.

Even in translation the sentences are poetic. But the characters are flat, the plot adolescent.

You’ve got better things to do in the next 90 minutes than read Bonjour Tristesse.

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